CHAPTER TWO

      ANGUS LEANT BACK in his office chair, finger tapping against his lips as he looked over the impressive wall pinned with striking images, word clusters and thought clouds framing the penultimate drafts of the Remède rebranding that the graphics team had moved into his office earlier that morning.

      Louis Fournier, the venerable president of the Remède cosmetics company, was just outside, leaning over Lucinda’s desk.

      Angus didn’t need to see Lucinda’s face. From the way she sat forward in her chair, chin resting on her palm, chair swinging from side to side, it was clear she was flirting her heart out.

      Angus felt the smile start in his throat before it even reached his mouth. Atta girl.

      Fitz’s assistant—Velma—was built like a German tank with the accent to match. She was stern, efficient and ferociously protective of her charge. Fitz claimed he couldn’t be trusted with anyone more tempting under his nose all day long. Everyone knew he adored Velma as much as Velma doted on him.

      Charlie’s new right hand—Kumar—was only slightly more human than Charlie. But, as work mates, they fit together like two pieces of a puzzle no one else understood.

      In fact, there was not one single staff member at the Big Picture Group who was carried by someone else. Fitz for all his insouciance, was a ruthless recruiter. They ran a seriously tight ship.

      And yet none of them held a candle to Lucinda.

      The way she went about things was instinctive. And tenacious. She knew when to be brusque, when to be dulcet, when to be straight down the line and when to bewitch until she had even the most difficult clients eating out of her hand in a matter of minutes.

      She was out there right now, wearing Remède’s Someday perfume. He’d seen it on her desk about an hour earlier. There was a story there, about her parents, both gone long before he’d met her. Lucinda kept a bottle in a drawer as a reminder of them, but she only pulled it out when Louis was on his way.

      As if she felt his thoughts, Lucinda turned to look over her shoulder, the floppy frills at her collar framing her face, her long, dark hair swinging, her red lips curled into a half-smile.

      The crack of the glass door created a slight distortion. He shifted slightly so he could see her whole face. It was a good face. Candid, spirited, empirically lovely and as familiar to him as his own.

      A pair of small lines criss-crossed above her nose. A rare indicator of indecision.

      Perhaps rare was the wrong word, for the criss-cross of lines over her nose had shown up more and more over the past weeks. Then there was that new lipstick. Darker, glossier than usual. She’d cut sugar from her coffee. Added infinitesimal pauses before each sentence. All of which, in Angus’s mind, spoke to restlessness. To a change in the air.

      And he was not a man who liked change.

      She lifted a single eyebrow in question. Ready?

      It took him a moment to remember what he was meant to be ready for.

      Louis Fournier. Remède. Saving his old friend’s business. He nodded curtly.

      The criss-cross above her nose flickered off and on before she turned back to finish up with Louis.

      Angus breathed out hard and rolled his shoulders.

      His instinct for branding came from the ability to tap into the greater collective human subconscious. To mine people’s baser urges in order to encourage—no, demand—that they look to his clients to fulfil those needs.

      Tapping into Lucinda’s baser needs to find out what was going on in her subconscious was not something he had any intention of doing.

      Whatever was going on with Lucinda did not impact on her work. It would pass. Everything did. Eventually. And, if not, he’d drag it out of her when he had the Remède account off his plate.

      Angus pressed out of his chair and moved to look over the mood wall one last time to make sure nothing had been missed. For nothing was ever perfect. Not for him. There were always improvements to make.

      A childhood spent being told that he was a mistake by the procession of men in his mother’s life, a blight, in the way, had not been pleasant. But there was no doubt his burning need to prove them wrong was the root of his success. The reason he never stopped striving to do better, to be better, to reach for more.

      Without them would he have been standing there in his huge corner office? Would he have had the gumption to land Louis Fournier as a client? As a mentor? As a friend?

      He heard Lucinda’s laughter from beyond the glass wall and he turned away from the mood board. She’d pinch him if she heard him speak that way about the business. Literally. She’d growl at him to “chillax”. To appreciate all he’d accomplished. To enjoy the spoils.

      His partners had no problem revelling in the benefits of their success. The highlight for Fitz had been when they’d been written up in GQ. Charlie’s highlight had come when the university from which he’d graduated with his doctorate in mathematics had enlisted him to manage their financial matters.

      Angus’s one bright, shining moment?

      It hadn’t hit him yet. Or, more precisely, for him it wasn’t about a moment. It was about moving forward. Stopping to look back, even for a moment, could halt the momentum he’d worked so hard to achieve. So he’d keep working. Keep striving. Keep kicking hard beneath the surface to make sure it continued.

      Voices drifted through the glass door leading from Lucinda’s desk to his as Lucinda waved Louis into the office. Angus moved to meet them halfway.

      “Gus,” said the older gentleman, a glint in his eye, and a goodly dose of French still in his accent despite his years spent in Australia. “Good of you to squeeze me in this morning.”

      Angus’s gaze slid to Lucinda who was quietly shutting the door behind her. “Did you flirt him into calling me that?”

      She opened her eyes wide and mouthed, “Who me?”

      At which Louis scoffed. “You do not answer to Gus? I am an old man. Anything I can do to save the time I have left…”

      “Fair enough,” said Angus. “Then I’d suggest you call that one Cindy. Every lost syllable helps.”

      Louis looked over his shoulder in time to see Lucinda scowl menacingly Angus’s way. She tried to right herself, but only came across looking guiltier still.

      Louis’s resultant laughter was rich and deep, full of the smoke left by a lifetime of cigars. “You two. Even if I did not have a business to save, I would pay simply to watch you spar.”

      The guilt on Lucinda’s face made way for chagrin as Louis reminded him of their Hail Mary attempt to right his company’s ancient ship. For Remède, one of the world’s most revered beauty brands, was on the verge of collapse.

      It would not happen on Angus’s watch. In fact, if he was on the hunt for a highlight, saving Remède from ruin would come close.

      For, once upon a time, Louis Fournier had saved him.

      Post-university, making waves as the youngest-ever junior partner in a whiz-bang upstart marketing firm, he’d met Louis at an industry night at which the older man had been a plus one.

      They’d started up a conversation at the bar and found commonality in their disinterest in schmoozing and their love of French New Wave cinema.

      The conversation had moved to the hotel lounge, leading to Angus missing the moment his team had won an award that night. Not that it had mattered. In the hour he’d spent with Louis he had already mentally moved on.